GRIEFBOT

That is, they understand the purpose of chatbots and generative models to be the ability to force other people to see a particular version of reality. It is a tool of power that masquerades as a tool of knowledge.

Practitioners should look to the arts and other cultural resources that help people deal with loss and memorialise history. For example, a chatbot could be designed to speak as a spiritual medium channelling the deceased from a spiritual realm in order to emphasise the separation of death and impart a sense of mysticism to the imaginative experienc... See more

As a Latine person for whom Día de los Muertos is part of the culture, Culber might find speaking with the dead a familiar concept. In China, one reason for the acceptance of AI ghosts might be the tradition of honoring and engaging with one’s ancestors. In contrast, the creepiness that Martha feels, and that I share, might arise from our Western c... See more

Modern social media is all about collecting data for marketing, so why would a griefbot be any different?

Any griever, or any student of history, knows that relationships don’t end neatly with death; memories, imaginings, questions and answers continue to churn in the minds of the living, aided by artefacts and shared community. The secular space where we allow this reality to flourish is the arts.

“My fiancée was a poet, and I would never disrespect her by feeding her words into an automatic plagiarism machine,” Abney said.

“She cannot be replaced. She cannot be recreated,” he said. “I’m also lucky to have some recordings of her singing and of her speech, but I absolutely do not want to hear her voice coming out of a robot pretending to be h... See more

However, despite myriad literature examining the use of digital technology to support the grieving process, most work is based on grief theories which overlook or downplay the importance of the enduring relationship with the deceased post death as a means to coping with grief, as many interventions based on these theories tend to focus on the berea... See more

A chatbot based on someone’s data is like an improv actor who has studied a backstory or character sketch in order to performatively represent a character based on that person, like a Civil War soldier at a historical reenactment, an Elvis impersonator, or King Pentheus in Dionysus in 69 (1969), the participatory rendition of Euripides’ play The Ba... See more